This issue features how-to articles on setting up a private network and preventing your DNS server from being used for DDoS attacks.

We also touch on two news items that happened recently: Red Hat releasing an OpenSSL Security Update for CentOS 6 & 7 and the global Internet connectivity disruptions that happened due to the BGP table size exceeding the default 512K-entry limit.

Using a private network ensures higher performance as external traffic restrictions are not applied to servers in private networks.
Data are also just that more secure when they travel through a private network, as they are not accessible from the faceless crowd of the Internet.

A misconfigured Domain Name System (DNS) server can be used to take part in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. In what is termed as a DNS amplification attack,
publicly accessible DNS servers are used by cybercriminals to overwhelm a target entity’s system with DNS response traffic.

Last August 12, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing tables exceeded 500K entries as more IPv4 classes were announced. Older router models were affected,
most notably popular models like the Cisco Catalyst 6500 and 7600. The default value for IPv4 table size in these models is 512K, which is no longer enough to hold the global table size.
The impact was felt globally as reports of disruptions and slower Internet speeds came in from the continental US and in the UK.